A wireless communication network represented in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 and 802.15.4 standards typically includes a wireless communication device as an access point (hereafter, “control device”), and a plurality of wireless communication devices as stations (hereafter, “terminal devices”).
In such a wireless communication network, for example, in home network use, a network may be posited in which a communication scheme of an 802.11 standard and a communication scheme of an 802.15.4 standard coexist. For example, a computer and an audio-visual (AV) device such as a television communicate by using the 802.11 standard, and major appliances such as an air conditioner and refrigerator communicate by using the 802.15.4 standard. Further, other wireless networks may be posited in which an older communication scheme of a previously-released product coexists with a new communication scheme of a latest-model product.
In such wireless networks it is preferable from a cost, operation, and maintenance perspective that the number of installed control devices does not increase in proportion to the number of communication schemes, but that, as illustrated in FIG. 17, a single installed control device 208 supports all communication schemes.
However, because the control device 208 does not know when a frame will be transmitted from a terminal device 202a, 202b of a communication scheme A or a terminal device 209a, 209b of a communication scheme B, the control device 208 is required to be constantly, simultaneously, on standby to receive data of different communication schemes.
With respect to this problem, technology is disclosed in which the control device 208 has a plurality of wireless integrated circuits (ICs) (for example, see Patent Literature 1 or Patent Literature 2). According to such technology, frames of different communication schemes are each demodulated and received by wireless ICs or PHY layers, and therefore standby to simultaneously receive frames of different communication schemes is possible.